Patricia Churchland

Patricia Churchland
Born
Patricia Smith

(1943-07-16) July 16, 1943
SpousePaul Churchland
Education
Alma materUniversity of British Columbia
University of Pittsburgh
Somerville College, Oxford
Philosophical work
Era20th-/21st-century philosophy
RegionWestern philosophy
SchoolAnalytic philosophy
Main interestsNeurophilosophy
Philosophy of mind
Philosophy of science
Medical and environmental ethics
Notable ideasNeurophilosophy, Eliminative Materialism

Patricia Smith Churchland (born 16 July 1943) is a Canadian-American analytic philosopher noted for her contributions to neurophilosophy and the philosophy of mind. She is UC President's Professor of Philosophy Emerita at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), where she has taught since 1984. She has also held an adjunct professorship at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies since 1989. She is a member of the Board of Trustees Moscow Center for Consciousness Studies of Philosophy Department, Moscow State University. In 2015, she was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Educated at the University of British Columbia, the University of Pittsburgh, and Somerville College, Oxford, she taught philosophy at the University of Manitoba from 1969 to 1984 and is married to the philosopher Paul Churchland. Larissa MacFarquhar, writing for The New Yorker, observed of the philosophical couple that: "Their work is so similar that they are sometimes discussed, in journals and books, as one person."